Arab press pans President Obama on Syria

If President Barack Obama isn’t happy with his press coverage in the United States, he ought to take a look at how he’s being portrayed in the Arab media.

As Obama steps up his push for congressional authorization for a strike on Syria, the president is coming under withering criticism by opinion leaders throughout the Middle East, according to a review by POLITICO and experts of Arabic- and English-language media in the region.

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The Obama bashing can be categorized in several ways: Those who charge the president’s needlessly dragging his feet; conspiracy theorists who argue it’s all a plot to boost Israel; and others who claim that any military operation in Syria is motivated only by the U.S.’s interest in dominating the region.

The increasingly unfavorable coverage Obama’s receiving in the Arab world - even come from the press in countries that support U.S. intervention in Syria - is doing harm to his image and influence, as well as further diminishing how America is perceived in the region, experts say. It hits especially hard coming at a time when Obama is looking anywhere he can, at home and abroad, to find allies for his plan to punish the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“There are (Arab) media who say the U.S. should do something and basically Obama is being a chicken shit about it,” said Lawrence Pintak, a former Middle East correspondent for CBS News and founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. “The main talking point is that al-Assad needs to be stopped, this is a humanitarian crisis the U.S. needs to move. The second set is that Obama is showing a level of cowardice in turning to Congress for political cover, that it undermines American effectiveness.”

In an open letter on Sept. 1 to Obama published on Al Arabiya, based in Dubai and considered one of the top Arab news outlets, popular columnist Nasser al-Sarami said a military strike is “the last chance” that Obama has to improve his image and credibility. “Strike at all the jihadi terrorist gatherings and the murderous regime…Mr. Obama, quite frankly, we do not have anyone other than you,” al-Sarami wrote, according to a translation by Voice of America.

Arab media experts said news outlets in Saudi Arabia have led the charge on calling on Obama to act, and Al Arabiya is considered to mostly align with the Saudi perspective.

In a sharply critical piece, Tariq Al-Homayed wrote recently in the London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that “it is not surprising that Assad continues to commit his crimes against Syria and the Syrians, for Assad’s strength stems from Obama’s weakness,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Michael Young, the opinion editor of the moderate English-language Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star, offered his view that Obama’s legacy is at risk as Syrians are “killed in droves.”

“America has rarely seemed so indolent in the face of barbarism,” Young said in the Aug. 23 piece. “Is Assad right in expecting no better than empty posturing from Washington? Or will the most overrated of American presidents be shamed into action, if only to salvage his collapsing reputation?”

While the White House and the America media are focusing on Obama’s “red line” against the use of chemical weapons as a justification for military action, the Arab media has shown little interest in that rationale as a basis for the attack. For them, a line was crossed long ago with the killing of large numbers of civilians by conventional means, Arab media experts said.

“Obama sat in his oval office for two and a half years, counting the tens of thousands of Syrian victims,” wrote Elias Harfoush in the pan-Arab and generally pro-Western Al-Hayat, which is based in London, according to a translation by The Times of Israel on Sept. 1. “What has the US president done in this period? Nothing! Until last August with a slip of the tongue he made the ‘mistake’ of warning Bashar Assad against crossing the ‘red line’ of using chemical weapons against his people.”